Can Russia and Kazakhstan Create an OPEC for Uranium

The funny thing about the globalist drive to go Green is that going Green in Germany has often meant greater reliance on burning lignite coal in place of Russian gas. But in general the World Economic Forum (WEF) campaign against oil and gas, with its undertones of hatred for the oil and gas-blessed by God Russians, Iranians and Texans is unsustainable. The green energy scam is not-so-slowly bankrupting the United Kingdom and Germany.

Rapid Re-Opening of Three Mile Island Suggests Claim Nuke Plants Would be Too Expensive to Re-Open Was Always a Scam

We've also seen the poster child for nuclear accidents in the United States, Three Mile Island be reopened to power Microsoft data centers. It's as if magically once billionaires need massive amounts of reliable electricity the current grid can't supply, nuclear becomes a priority after decades of being disdained by activists and ignored by politicians. The fake green agenda also in numerous cases has simply been about greenwashing competition-killing corruption. A notorious example was fake environmentalist concerns and NIMBYism being used by the Obama Administration to block the Keystone XL pipeline, so that Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway-owned railroads could ship the Canadian crude south in less safe tanker cars instead of the cancelled steel pipe.

Above image credit: OpenAI Art visualizing a Russian nuclear power plant

More on the government-industry corruption of green energy and the useful idiots for the globalists' depopulationist Gaea cult in a later ESW piece.

Nuclear Waste is Not a Major Problem with Nuclear Power--

Waste Reprocessing Can Reduce the Volume

To that end, that is declaring you are green and actually still having some semi-affordable electricity, most of the Collective West regimes have lately returned to nuclear power. In truth, for the volume of mostly less-radioactive waste materials fission produces, nuclear energy is very green. For our readers benefit, here is a visualization of the world's entire nuclear waste output since the 1950s, much of which is at a low-level of radioactivity or can be reprocessed into either nuclear fuel or for medical uses.

As you can see below, the entire volume of highly radioactive waste can be reduced to roughly the size of an 8-story apartment building, roughly 70 feet or 21 meters high. The medium-level waste would take up less space than a typical New York City block stacked about 28 stories into the sky--or encased in thick concrete and buried deep underground. For decades, the US government has sought to bury higher and medium-radioactivity waste at Yucca Mountain roughly 90 miles from Las Vegas, but Congressional critics, the Nevada state government and anti-nuclear activists have been fighting this solution. While we don't necessarily advocate for a single disposal site solution for any country, least of all for Russia, Canada or the U.S.--all of which have a considerable number of abandoned mineshafts as the basis for disposal deep underground--it's clear that safely storing waste long-term is far from the insoluble problem anti-nuclear activists have portrayed.

Nuclear Energy is More Efficient and Therefore More Environmentally Friendly Than Wind/Solar

Nuclear power in addition to being more reliable is actually much greener than solar or wind, which can kill birds and fill landfills with worn-out panels. Only German idiots, the ideologues of Die Grünen were so purist as to push through the wholesale closure of their nuclear power plants. Of course, those same German greens are counting on buying excess power from France, 70% of which is powered by nuclear power plants. Hypocrisy much?

Here too, the Greens and their Atlantic Bridge owners, as well as the once proud postwar French reduced to US vassals have all run into a bit of a problem: their main nuclear fuel source, uranium. This is not just Uranium ore, of course, since uranium is not coal or gas or even fuel oil that can just be poured into a furnace and burnt to power the steam generators. No, uranium takes a lot of processing and preparation to be refined as a trace element in ore and then combined and enriched enough to be useful as fuel for a nuclear reactor. Plutonium which can also be used to make nuclear bombs takes even more processing, All of this is a dangerous and very high technological process requiring expensive infrastructural investments and the knowledge base to run it.

It's interesting to note that the biggest production of uranium ore is found in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan at 23,000 tons, followed by Australia, at 7,300 tons and Canada produces 4,800 tons. Another post-Soviet Republic in Uzbekistan mines 4100 tons with Russia around 3400 tons. The African nation of African nation Namibia mines 6,400 tons, while Niger, which has recently kicked out its former colonial masters the French stands at 3500 tons.

A glance at these figures on the surface would suggest Russia is not in a good place to try and create a sellers' cartel for this strategic asset or form any kind of bloc for uranium similar to that we see for oil, namely a uranium OPEC. But, as they say, the Devil is in the details.

So we begin to look deeper into this complicated market. The biggest users of Uranium are the US, followed by China and France. The US uses roughly twice as much Uranium as France, which itself bases 70% of its electricity production on nuclear power plants. France, until recently, purchased its Uranium ore at less than 10% market values through its former colonies like Niger who were part of France’s neo-colonial empire. In 2024, things changed drastically. China, while mining some Uranium domestically uses everything it extracts and imports a whole lot more.

France is Losing the Cheap Uranium Ore from its Former African Colonies

On the surface, even with France losing its source of ultra-cheap uranium ore from Niger and now having to pay actual fair market value, there should not be major issues, not for France or the sanctions happy US. The Collective West should be easily supplied from Kazakhstan, Australia, Namibia and Canada. But there are issues.

First and foremost the issue of the world’s largest producer of uranium ore: Kazakhstan. More than 20% of Kazakhstan's ore and mining companies are owned directly by Russia. Nationalization by Astana is of course out of the question--Russia would intervene militarily. Being the bedrock on which Kazakhstan exists and is still not a vassal of China, Russia has a lot of leverage over to who and how Kazakhstan sells that ore. Additionally, Moscow has a lot of sway over Uzbekistan, and since Moscow helped Niger gain its full independence from the French grasp, over their markets as well. So Moscow now has, including its own production, control over 34,000 tons of uranium ore. What's left for the Collective West and America in specific is 18,500 tons, that is if Namibia decides to list toward DC and Brussels. Thus Moscow already has a very strong hand to control the prices of ore. They could easily drive prices higher, a double price check for the increasingly poorer French.

That is, until one realizes that uranium ore by itself is just a very dense rock, as it still has to be processed, extracting the trace uranium and enriched. Most of the nearly 500 commercial nuclear power reactors operating or under construction worldwide require uranium 'enriched' in the U-235 isotope for their fuel. The uranium has to be converted into a gaseous form in centrifuges. Prior to enrichment, uranium oxide must be converted to a fluoride, so that it can be processed as a gas at cooler temperatures.

This is where we have to look at who manufactures enriched uranium ready for shaping and installation as power rods for the nuclear power plants. Right off the bat, one must understand that Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia are raw resource extraction economies, that is, they can get the ore out of the ground, but they do not handle the processing.

Russia's Enrichment Capacity Presents an Opportunity to Cartelize Enriched Uranium

Worldwide there is an enrichment capacity of 60,200 tons. Here is the shocking part for the Collective West: Russia is the biggest enriched uranium producer by far, producing almost half of the world’s enriched uranium, at 27,700 tons. France is in second place at 7,500 tons and China in third place at 6,300 tons. The US is fourth at 4,900 tons. The rest of Europe, minus France, can produce another 13,700 tons.

But here's the problem--the US alone utilizes around 18,700 tons for its needs. France which has a very large nuclear energy complex uses 9,600 tons and the rest of the EU, now that Germany has shuttered its nuclear plants, consumed about as much as France. Least we forget China consumes about as much as France, but is rapidly nuclearizing its power grid to reduce emissions and LNG imports for its gas-fired plants. And of course, Russia also consumes about as much out of its own production.

And here is the crux of the issue: not only is uranium ore production already falling behind demand, even as Russia helps electrify Africa with nuclear power plants, but Russia is in the position to cobble an initial UO-pact (Uranium ore) with itself, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Niger controlling 34,000 tons of ore. The remaining production is already not enough for refinement in the Collective West and the meeting of Western nuclear energy needs. This alone should cause ore prices to skyrocket.

Russia also has massive and growing enrichment capacity that can soak up most of that volume of ore. So Russia already has a chokepoint on the market for enriched uranium, combined with a hold on the ore itself. And the new Central Asian and African nations-included cartel will be in a position to drive pricing for the rest of the world. Add China to the cartel you automatically get Mongolia and more than likely even Brazil will join.

Western Politicians Didn't Think About Russian Counterstrikes in the Sanctions Wars

Now for the really scary part for the mindless Russophobic Western politicians: not only have Western sanctions failed, but Russia is now in position to level its own counter-sanctions and inflict real economic pain on Washington, Paris, Berlin and London. President Putin instructed Prime Minister Mishustin to work out a sanctions package against the West for strategic goods, such as rare earths, titanium and yes, enriched uranium. This time, unlike with LNG, the US will not only lose from increased prices, but will not be able to avoid being the biggest victim, followed closely by France.

The cost of everything in the Collective West is set to continue to skyrocket. Welcome to the part of the economic war where Russia shoots back, suki.